Updated March 18, 2010
Read update. Splog is a relatively new term (blog + spam = splog). It refers to a web site, or blog, that is set up for the sole purpose of generating traffic to either Google Adsense accounts or to another web site. Invariably, these splogs use ‘scraped copy’ (keyword-rich text that is automatically ripped from other places in order to boost key word relevance in search engines like Google). These nasty little bandwidth wasters also make it difficult for legitimate and interesting blogs to get decent logo design search engine placement. People who use this tactic are often ethically challenged, and are helping make the Internet a less-than-cool place. Not that this kind of nonsense is a new thing. A while back, we began our Copycats feature (truth be told, I was sick of sending cease and desist letters to folks who had ‘helped themselves’ to our logo examples, our web site copy and even our company name and logo – both of which are registered trademarks) and set up the feature to illustrate a similar kind of problem. Every once in a while, we trawl around the Internet looking for blatant rip-offs because:
a) we tend to get annoyed that people simply cut-and-paste material that we spent hours of our lives creating,
b) we think that these folks are doing a great disservice to both clients and the design industry by claiming heritage, experience or skills that they don’t possess, and
c) it’s generally uncool.
In a recent Internet walkabout, we discovered hundreds (yes, hundreds) of web sites hosted on Geocities – Yahoo’s answer to MySpace – and MSN’s Spaces) that featured material that had been stolen from our site, particularly our design articles section in which we attempt to feature helpful articles for designers and our clients alike.
All of these web sites had two things in common – namely keyword soaked outgoing links to an outfit called Logo Design Pros (who feature both .co.uk and .com versions of their domain) and copy taken word-for-word from our library articles – see who needs a logo and choosing a graphic designer. It appeared that somebody (if not Logo Design Pros themselves) were attempting to artificially inflate the Google Page Rank (a search engine system that ‘ranks’ a web site by the number of other pages that link to it) of Logo Design Pros’ site by peppering Geocities with web sites of little original content or worse (huge swaths of copy that had been ripped right of our site). Here’s one example. Here’s another. Now, this would be particularly uncool, especially for a company that purports to be a creative logo design company, so I used their web site ‘Live Chat’ feature to have a talk with a helpful chap who went by the name of Max. The transcript went something (exactly) like this:
So, there you have it (despite the fact that the chat window was closed at Mach 3 once I mentioned the reason for my ‘call’). Logo Design Pros deny having anything to do with ripping off our web site, in order to spam Geocities (same thing is also happening over at Blogger.com – over 200 Splogs with outgoing links to Logo Design Pros – and Spaces.MSN.com with over 128 similarly set-up splogs). Of course, I could be a wag and point out that it’s highly unlikely that someone else would spend all the time and resources to ‘bump’ the Page Rank and inbound link count of ‘somebody else’s’ site, but I won’t. I could also argue that if Logo Design Pros are indeed the guilty party (though I have no real way of knowing) that they should really spend less time spamming search engines and more time honing their design skills. That way, logos that look awfully similar to material we designed for our clients wouldn’t show up on their web site. Take DDR Tech – a logo that we designed back in 2001 for strangely enough, a company called DDR Tech (and featured as examples of website logos here). It looks remarkably similar to the design that Logo Design Pros are claiming they created for a company called Mystic Gulf Productions and featured on their web site as shown on this side-by-side comparion.
Funny thing though, while the logo we created for DDR Tech is featured as a trademark on their web site here, a quick Google search for Mystic Gulf Productions turns up absolutely nothing. Nada. Zippo. Guess we can add that to ‘things that make us go hmmmm’ column.
(oh yeah – the links above all have ‘no follow’ scripts, so that no lovely PR is passed on to our new friends at Logo Design Pros. It’s a new feature that Google and other search engines have introduced to combat the other bane of blogging – comment spam. You can read about that tag here)
Update
March 18/2010: In the more than four years and over 400 blog posts since this piece was originally published, I kinda forgot all about it. The splogs mentioned above have mostly disappeared (as have several of the ‘community’ domains they were hosted on) and while blog content scraping is still an issue, we’re on to bigger and hopefully, better, things. Other than using our trademark to trigger Google adwords from time to time, sorta forgot about Logo Design Pros too. Don’t think too many people even read the post either, as our blog traffic was a fraction of what it is now. All in all, not a big deal.
Fast forward to this February, when someone claiming to be the ‘Max‘ from the chat window above, submitted a comment to this post. In it, he explained why he couldn’t help me at the time, “there was nothing I could do“, and alleged that LogoDesignPros.com is owned by Axact, an extremely large, and apparently very successful IT outfit hailing from Karachi, Pakistan. They claim revenues of over $200 million on their website. Even have their own bloody yacht. Having never heard of Axact, didn’t think twice about the fairly innocuous statement, but after it hit the blog, we received a rather lengthy and ominous Cease & Desist e-mail from someone at legal@Axact.com, demanding that we remove the comment, claiming that it was “highly libelous“, contained “completely false information/allegation against Axact” and that Axact retained “its right to initiate civil as well as criminal proceedings” against us. Pretty wild stuff for a 55 word blog comment. In subsequent communication with Fahim ul Karim, some legal beagle from AKKC Law, a firm claiming to represent Axact, he also told me that the comment was “posted anonymously” by someone “impersonating” the named commenter and that “said posting was aimed only at defaming Axact by submitting false information“.
Seemed like much ado about nothing to me, but apparently Axact were none too happy at being identified as the alleged owners of the LogoDesignPros.com website and supposedly, the person named in the comment, being “known to Axact” hadn’t actually submitted it, so he wasn’t too thrilled either. Karim also requested the IP# of the poster (ahm, no) so that they could “pursue legal action against the author of the posting“, something which the company appears to be no stranger to. Alas, we had already deleted the comment (you know, as per their original request and all that) and along with it, any IP# or e-mail address of the supposedly faux ‘Max’.
I’d just love to tell you what’s what on all this, but oddly, and despite being asked several times over, people answering the legal@Axact.com e-mail account won’t confirm, or deny, if Axact operated, or operates, the Logodesignpros.com website or not. Nor would the nice Mr. Karim. So I have no idea if they do. Or don’t. I have no way of knowing if Max was who he said, nor whether what he claimed was true (anonymous blog comments and all that) but there’s a cloak-and-dagger vibe to the entire episode that seems oddly out of place for some obscure logo design website. And if that wasn’t enough update weirdness, the website we searched for back in 2006 to no avail is now live.
See, here’s the thing. You may have thought that the online logo design business was all about the logos. Hardly. It’s a frikkin’ war out here. And somehow, I don’t think I’ve heard the last of this. Nor have you.
Footnote: This seems to be a somewhat tenuous issue, especially with the IT and design crowd in Karachi, so I’ve closed the comments section for the time being. Don’t want any more ahm, misunderstandings hitting print, but if you have any comments about this rather bizarre affair, feel free to get in touch.
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Tags: business, industry, rants, social media
Nothing wrong with creating sites to link into your own – but ripping off the content of others is not cool at all. Other logo companies seem to be doing much worse things these days though – it’s a very competitive, and sometimes downright nasty business.